Deutsche Telekom imagining tomorrow's routers

Now that the Mobile World Congress is behind us, it is useful to reflect a bit more on the design concepts presented there by Deutsche Telekom ["DT"].

While much of the media attention fell on their AI phone ("the phone without apps"), the more inspiring exploration was definitely on the router side.

In a series of beautifully prototyped design studies (all developed in collaboration with studio Layer), DT sought to explore three questions, as worded by Jonathan Abrahamson (DT Chief Product & Digital Officer):

Couldn't a router be more than the little box in the corner? What if we created a mash up of the latest tech-augmented reality, artificial intelligence, WiFi sensing and computer vision, and brought this to a router design? What new applications and use cases can we enable?

The three design studies were presented together as "Concept T" at the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. [This DT article describes them well. See also this LinkedIn post by Pedro Bandeira , DT's Vice President Product Innovation and New business, Europe].

The "Concept View" study is centred on an AI-based personal assistant "for all aspects of daily life" and visualised through a holographic avatar. The hologram acts as a digital butler or home/ life/ shopping assistant who can also present you holographic visualisations of objects in your house or products in a shop.

"Concept Level" is the second design concept, and in many respects an iteration of the Connectivity Concept (a collaboration between Deutsche Telekom and studio Layer) presented at the 2022 Milan Design Week. A base with conventional router functions can be supplemented with other elements and thus enables a tailor-made setup. From left to right it features a flat digital wallet "web 3" module for cryptocurrencies, a cone module for health and home monitoring, a cylindrical module with display that includes an interactive AI voice assistant and also offers smart home control, and a spherical mesh module to ensure perfect connectivity.

Yet, the most inspiring and thoughtful concept is definitely "Concept Buddy", as it combines all of the functions of the second design concept. But it is also mobile and comes with a built-in projector, which opens up a great deal of opportunities to support people in their daily life environments with practical challenges or tasks.

DT hinted at some health and wellbeing "use case" scenarios in their texts (e.g. personal trainer), and went more in depth during a public discussion with Monica Dalla Riva (SVP Customer Experience & Design], Pedro Bandeira (VP Product Innovation and New Business, Europe), and Dominik Lauf (Senior Innovation Product Lead), where they spoke particularly about providing value to elderly users, who are sometimes less or not mobile.

The scenarios can be many and need to be refined. Think e.g. homecare and companionship for the bed bound or those with dementia, the day-to-day tasks in small offices or shared office hubs, enhanced visits at museums and other sites of public or tourist attraction, support in small shops, etc.

The Concept T prototypes (and the Concept Buddy in particular) probably allow use case exploration to be crafted quickly and convincingly: fast, virtuous iterations of initial use case development, in-context observations, modifications, user testing, and back again, ending up in a potentially really successful product.

DT will then have to decide if and how they might open up this platform to external developers in the future, thus allowing further potentials for future revenue streams.

Mark Vanderbeeken, Experientia